Prentice calls for full review of Alberta’s foreign trade offices

EDMONTON — Tory leadership candidate Jim Prentice says that if he becomes premier next month, he will conduct an immediate review of Alberta’s foreign trade offices to address complaints they have not been effective.

Prentice told reporters this week the review could result in staff changes and foreign offices being relocated or shut down.

The review will also include the provincial office that former premier Alison Redford recently opened in Ottawa, he said.

“These offices need to serve a purpose,” he said Thursday. “If some of them aren’t working, we need to make changes. If some of them aren’t necessary, let’s close them.”

Prentice raised the issue during a candidates forum Monday in Edmonton and expanded on it after a speech on accountability Thursday.

The Redford government reviewed the province’s 10 foreign trade offices last year and recommended opening six additional offices in India, Singapore, Brazil, China, California and Illinois.

The offices in Singapore, New Delhi and Chicago have since opened. The others are slated to open this fiscal year. The trade office budget last year was $8.1 million.

The government review also called for the offices to be staffed with experts in various trade sectors and for new performance measurements be designed to gauge their effectiveness.

The ministry says only that “significant progress has been made” on implementing the recommendations.

International and Intergovernmental Relations Minister Cal Dallas was not available for an interview Friday. “We will not be speaking to comments from the leadership race,” his spokesman said.

Rival PC leadership candidate Thomas Lukaszuk said the trade offices serve a vital role in helping small and medium-sized businesses find foreign trading partners, but they need the resources to do the work that is required.

“They definitely would be more effective if we were to staff them with more expertise,” he said.

Lukaszuk said staff must speak the language, understand the culture and be experts in the agriculture, financial or technology sectors, depending on the country.

He called for open job competitions to find the best people and an end to patronage appointments to fill those jobs.

Opposition critics have repeatedly questioned the value of the trade offices and have criticized the PC government for using patronage appointments to staff the offices.

The appointment of former Tory cabinet minister Gary Mar, runner-up to Redford in the 2011 leadership race, to head the province’s Hong Kong office raised an opposition furor. NDP Leader Brian Mason said he believes the offices are a waste of money and there is no need for the province to operate a string of trade offices around the world.

“I believe these have become political patronage plums, quite frankly,” he said.

Liberal Leader Raj Sherman also believes the offices might be more effective if they were staffed with qualified people selected through a fair and open job competition.

“We find a lot of the offices that opened recently were just patronage appointments and a way to reward PC insiders,” Sherman said.

“But clearly that isn’t happening,” she said. “Look at the $400,000 or so that was spent by Ms. Redford’s assistant to travel the world to (do) all the advance work. That should be why we have these offices.”

But Smith sees no need for Alberta to have an office in Ottawa, saying it was “astonishing” and “mystifying” the PC government had to do that to maintain a good relationship with the federal Conservative government.

“Why can’t the ministers and MLAs just pick up the phone and call their members of Parliament?” she asked.

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